r/Yemen • u/UnlikelyQuail190 • 5d ago
Questions looking for advice
I'm a yemeni who was born and lives in an arab country in the middle east known for racism against yemenis. im a high school student of both yemeni parents and after moving cities/schools to the capital city because of my father's work ive been strugling with racism both from students and teachers, weather direct of not. i don't want to tell my parents so i don't worry them and i don't wanna seem weak but it's been bothering me alot to think off. most comments are not being said in my presence so i get the privilege of not hearing it and having to answer but im still worried if someone says something or does something to me that i wouldn't know how to handle the situation. school teachers/counsellor and cops are not really an option for the fact that they are mostly racist themselves and because in high school it's sort of a GPA and im trying my best to get good grades, getting in fights with teachers and students won't help with that but of course i still want to defend myself
whenever i google stuff online i get weird answers about going and telling them how i feel wich would make it 100 times worse if u actually live in the real world im not going around telling people how it is effecting me and would like it if they just stop being so racist that's just dumb if someone has a similar experience or knows how to deal with this type of situation id appreciate that
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u/SmAF1 4d ago
I’m sorry you’re going through this. But do yourself a favor. Don’t blame your situation entirely on racism and act helpless.
Yes racism is real. But don’t allow this fact to make you give up on life or respond negatively to everyone because they may also be racist. It’s a vicious circle.
You become a victim of racism. You recoil (which is a reasonable response) but then you are also doing this with someone who is probably not racist and they think that you’re a jerk (which is a reasonable response from the person who thinks you’re a jerk). But then you start to think the guy who feels you’re being a jerk is also a racist. Hence the never ending circle.
My advice is to thicken your skin a little bit, and don’t assume everybody is a racist to you.
Also, you’re a Yemeni! You carry more history than most people do. Be proud of who you are.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/IcyBlackberry7728 4d ago
This is good advice. I would also add OP should consider rolling the punches and making racist jokes too to show it doesn’t bother him. We all get made fun of about things we can’t change, so we might as well poke fun at it ourselves and poke fun at others
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u/zachgobah 4d ago
Repeating bad behavior to placate bad behavior isn’t good advice.
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u/IcyBlackberry7728 4d ago
Sometimes you have to learn to roll with the punches and dish out some yourself.
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u/DaMagedArchitect 3d ago
Racism towards Yemenies is just awful because they are worthless without petromoney, we taught them for decades in education and careers. Just because they politically flipped the tables on us don't give these ignorant bedouins any authority to be racist against our rich culture, heritage and history. I flipped my tongue to my native city and people here love it. I don't publicize where I am from because stigma but show them brilliant work, more than they ask for and in turn force them to treat me as myself, not what my citizenship is. Best is to ignore comments, bash them with success. They can't compete with us.
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u/nikiyaki 4d ago
Try to consciously avoid internalizing feeling bad or lesser due to it. It is all about them and not you. It's easy to say but can take a lot of practice to actually believe.
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u/Standard_Difficulty3 5d ago
Is it Saudi?